


Three O'Clock

by elusive_ellipsis



Series: Half-Decent Omens [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Drunk Aziraphale (Good Omens), Drunk Crowley (Good Omens), Scene: Drunk in Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Three O'Clock (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:33:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25131694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elusive_ellipsis/pseuds/elusive_ellipsis
Summary: An alternative version of the drunk scene in Aziraphale's bookshop from Good Omens, ending up so far away from the original there's a good chance that getting back there would offer higher success rates to the blackout drunk stumbling around in the dark.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Half-Decent Omens [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757263
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Three O'Clock

And now it was three o'clock. The Antichrist had been on Earth for a while - no one was exactly timing it, but it was definitely a while - and one angel and one demon were getting completely sozzled in London, Soho.

They sat opposite each other on the floor of Aziraphale's backroom, because chairs had long since proven to be too demanding of dexterity, and there was more space to put bottles down there anyway.

"The point is," declared Crowley, waving a bottle around slightly dangerously. "Oh, I totally had a brilliant point just a minute ago... I think it was about sharks, maybe? Or the other ones?"

"Jellyfish?" suggested Aziraphale, reaching out to steady the bottle in Crowley's hand and simultaneously moving some nearby books aside with a snap of his fingers - a multitasking feat that proved far to complex as the books tumbled past the pile they were headed for and fell down a hole in the floor the angel couldn't remember ever being there. Frowning, he pulled the bottle from Crowley's hand and poured himself a glass from it. "Huge long things. Length of. Er. London. Yeah."

"The  _ length _ of London?" asked the demon. "How can something be the length of London?"

He didn't seem overly concerned about contemplating it for long, though. He'd reached the point of drunkenness when it was hard to follow a single path of thought for any duration greater than a few seconds. "Don't think it was jellyfish. They're too squishy. Maybe whales? Maybe dolphins, actually. What's the difference between the two of them anyway?"

Aziraphale pondered this. He waved the bottle slowly back and forth, and Crowley followed the motion with his eyes. For a moment the two of them said nothing, then Aziraphale spoke up. "Mating out of water?"

Crowley dragged his eyes from the alcohol and peered at the angel. "Whu?"

"Dolphins and whales," said Aziraphale, sounding very proud that he knew what they were talking about, though he couldn't by this point remember what the relation between the two animals was. Crowley gave him a look.

"Well, which one of them does that then?" he asked.

Aziraphale opened his mouth, and the pride drained from his face. Absently, he scratched his chin and tried to pull himself into a more dignified cross-legged position, with debatable success. "Er."

Crowley grinned, aware that he'd probably won some kind of argument there. "See?" He picked up another bottle. "Dolphins. They're my point."

"That's your point? Just... dolphins?" said Aziraphale. "That's not a point. That's not even a statement."

"Is too," Crowley protested. "Dolphins are a great point. Maybe they're not the pointiest of points, and yeah, I think there were some other details I was going to add sometime, but who the heaven knows what they were, so... dolphins."

"Not a point," said the angel, shaking his head in what he hoped was a stern manner, but all he achieved was making himself dizzy. Dizzier, would be more accurate, actually. He crossed his arms instead, and from that action came the distinctive rip of tearing fabric.

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

"Dolphins are pretty pointy," he persisted. "They can balance balls and..." Then he remembered what he was getting at to start with. "Brains!" he shouted, making Aziraphale jump and spill wine over his ankle and the floor.

Giving Crowley a half-hearted reproachful look, he dabbed at the stain with his fingers and managed to smudge it around a little. "What, are they zombie dolphins now?"

He tutted, looking at his hand, which was now stained with red wine. He tried to rub it off on his waistcoat without thinking. Between the new stain and the torn seam, it was in a sorry state. 

"No, no, no," said Crowley, oblivious to Aziraphale's clothing woes. "No one's eating the brains. I mean, I suppose you could, but I doubt they'd taste nice. No, the point - the point, that I've been trying to make this whole time, is they have huge brains. I mean, bloody huge. Massive."

"Look at this," said Aziraphale, who had not taken in a single word that Crowley had just said, and was looking at his clothes sorrowfully. "Do you know how long I've had this? Over a hundred years, I tell you, and not a mark on it. Now look at it!"

"Well," Crowley said, sighing, "that's what'll happen when you wear cream. It was a disaster waiting to happen."

"You can't talk," said Aziraphale, staring gloomily at an empty bottle by Crowley's foot.

Crowley looked up. The angel nodded at him, as if Crowley had any idea of what he was talking about. "I wear black," said the demon.

"Not your clothes." Aziraphale rolled his eyes, and then wobbled for a moment to regain his depleting sense of balance. "You."

"Me?" said the demon, frowning. "I don't get it. I can't talk... because of the wine? Don't you try to tell me I've drunk more than you, I can still see that empty bottle behind you."

Aziraphale tried to nudge said bottle out of Crowley's line of sight, but succeeded only in knocking it over.

"No, no, no," he said, "it's because you're... because you're... something. Began with a b, maybe, or a d. A dolphin? Are you a dolphin?"

"Not last time I checked," said Crowley. He shook his head. "Brains! Dolphins and whales and brains. Got distracted by... by the- dolphins." He nodded firmly, and took the bottle back from Aziraphale. "That's my point, see?"

Aziraphale tipped his head to one side. "Is it, though? I'm not getting many... point-y vibes over here."

Crowley snorted, then promptly burst out coughing as he inhaled his wine. When he stopped, he was still grinning.

"What?" asked the angel. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I don't think I've ever heard you use the word 'vibes' before. Please, for Satan's sake, never do it again. Modern doesn't suit you, my friend."

"I can be modern," said Aziraphale indignantly.

"Really? Modern? In your hundred-year-old suit?"

"Yes! Modern," he said, with something that might have been a confident air six glasses of wine ago, "is a mindset."

"Tell me, angel, did you hear that in a TED talk or did you come up with it all by yourself?" said Crowley.

"Dolphins don’t have a point," continued the angel along his very frayed thread of thought. "I mean, they have fins, but they're all... smooth."

"No- you-" Crowley gave up. He poured two glasses of wine and pushed one across the floor to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale considered, then replaced the empty one in his hand with it. He watched his reflection wobble, dark and red, in his unsteady grip. Dolphins, whales... "Kraken!" The wine sloshed onto the floorboards with his sudden exclamation.

Crowley raised his eyebrows. "Kraken? I never thought I'd say this, but perhaps you should lay off the alcohol, angel."

"That… that I do not deny," said Aziraphale, "maybe... But the kraken is definitely real. I saw God make it and everything. Supposed to rise up when the sea boils. Or it might make the sea boil. No one was actually hugely clear on the mechanics of the end of the world, just that it ends. And we'll win, of course."

"Nahh," said the demon. "You really think that?" He sipped his drink and paddled in his thoughts like an exhausted puppy.

"Yeah," said Aziraphale. "There'll be goodness everywhere and everything will be perfect and everyone will be happy. Course we'll win."

Crowley looked at him for a moment and then sat back. "Really? When has anyone been happy in perfection?"

"Um… well, Adam and Eve, were happy. Of course, there was the whole apple debacle, but… before that they were quite happy."

"They were clueless, Aziraphale. That's not quite the same thing."

"Well, obviously there's someone, probably plenty of someones, who've lived perfect and happy lives. I just... can't name any right now."

The demon smirked, and the angel sighed. 

"Everything was so much simpler in Eden," said Aziraphale. "I mean, there was just the one rule, really: don't eat the apples. Easy enough to enforce. But now, the whole idea of good... it's not that straightforward, is it? You're lucky. Evil has stayed pretty much the same. Murder, torture, stealing, the Twilight trilogy... all unevicol... inoquival… totally bad." The angel smiled to himself. "Do you remember when we first met? On that wall… they don't make walls like that any more. The Great Wall of China isn't bad, I suppose. But that was a good wall."

Crowley snorted again. "Yeah, well, sadly people don't go around making huge stone cages for humanity anymore." He thought for a moment, and sniffed. "But, uh. Yeah," he continued quietly, "that was a nice wall." Then he dipped his nose in his wine trying to take another sip.

"It was quite a nice thunderstorm, too, don't you think? Our very first. God went all out on that one."

"Mm," mumbled the demon, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "First impressions and all." He glared at the new stain on his sleeve, which was barely visible anyway, and it evaporated. Aziraphale's waistcoat simultaneously became somewhat more cream.

"I've never been a great fan of rain," said Aziraphale. "It gets damp _everywhere_ , and I'm convinced my umbrella has a hole in it, but I've never been able to find one."

"Most of the things you own are over a hundred years old, angel. I'd be more surprised to find your umbrella  _ didn't _ have a hole." Crowley drained the last of a bottle and flung it over his shoulder. Aziraphale flinched and miracled it away from the row of first editions it was on track to shatter against. "Is it just me, or have you become less angelic over the years? I mean, you were never quite as pompous as, say, Michael, but you were certainly a  _ little _ bit more... pious way back when." Aziraphale did not look to be in agreement. "No? You don't think so? Not even a little tiny bit?"

Aziraphale glared at him unconfidently. "Well you can hardly say you're Hell's most demonic little demon can you?" he said. "I mean you..." He dragged himself through the depths of his mind - a bookshelf, as he liked to imagine it. Fingertips, slippery with alcohol, brushed over tomes of example and slid off them again. Finally he snagged on a heavy volume, ancient as age itself, and yanked it out. "You befriended an angel, for a start." Aziraphale sluggishly realised this convicted him too, and hoped Crowley wouldn't notice.

"Surely demons are more angelic to begin with, though," said Crowley. "I mean, every demon was once an angel. So we can be excused our... goodness, so to speak, every once in a while. But you - what excuse do you have for being less than perfect, huh? I mean, I wouldn't want to speak for the Big Boss, but I'm willing to reckon They're still not hugely tolerant of the rebellious types." Seeing Aziraphale's face, Crowley knew, even in his severely drunken state, that he'd gone too far. "But you'll be fine, of course. I mean, you're like, the Goodest of them all, really. It's a naive kind of Goodness, of course, but that's not a bad thing. It's like babies, and..." Crowley waved his hand around as if it might help him find a second example. "...sheep. You know, just... totally harmless, with everyone's best interests at heart."

Aziraphale looked less than impressed. "I am... a _sheep_?"

" _Like_ a sheep, I said. Like a sheep."

"I do like sheep," said Aziraphale thoughtfully.

A moment passed; then Crowley sat up suddenly and snapped his fingers. Aziraphale jumped, and his mind throbbed like a stream of Windows error messages.

"Sheep!" Crowley was crowing. "See, y'know what happens to sheep in a few years?"

Aziraphale eyed him warily.

"Sheep - and all the other animals, bees and whales and dolphins, and their brains too, see, all of them, and everything else like plants and houses and, and those little plastic rings in the tops of milk cartons that break off when you pull them instead of opening the stupid thing, down the Great Cosmic Drain, _schloop_ , like gone-off milk."

Aziraphale blinked at him. "What was that about milk?"

Crowley stared back at Aziraphale, equally confused. "The milk? That was all you picked up from that? I'm talking about what _happens_ , in - well, less than eleven years now. Come on, this is like Being an Angel 101."

"Oh," said Aziraphale, who was still trying to work out why the milk had gone off if you couldn't open it. "That."

"Yeah," said Crowley. " _That_. The Big Thing. The End of Times. The Permanent Terma - Ternim - Death of Sheep and All Existence if we don't do something about it."

Aziraphale shut his eyes and watched the colours blossom behind his eyelids. "Do something? What... What do you mean?"

"Well... we know where the Antichrist is - or rather, I know where the Antichrist is, and the whole point is he's sufficiently evil enough to bring about the end of the world. What if he wasn't?"

"This does not seem the type of conversation to have this far away from sober."

Crowley considered. "Yeah," he said, after a sloppy mental debate. "You're probably right." The bottles glinted in the glow from Aziraphale's desk lamp. "I'm going to sober up. The room is starting to spin in a not-very-fun way."

"Me too." The pair winced as the bottles began filling up again. Thankfully they also righted themselves, so the wine didn't immediately dribble back out onto the floor. When there was still one bottle's worth left to return to a bottle which had been hurtling towards some first editions before finding itself suddenly very very far away, on a confused accountant's desk, the wine used the glasses, then Aziraphale's mug, then an unfortunate top hat which had been sitting long untouched in Aziraphale's attic, a relic of his magic-loving years, as containers. The angel would later be very upset about this, and the demon would be very relieved.

"That's better," croaked Aziraphale, adjusting his bowtie. Crowley only grunted, paused, and reached for a filled glass.

"So," said Aziraphale, "the Antichrist?"

"Yes," Crowley said, who actually seemed more disoriented sober than drunk. "That guy. He was really quite an ugly baby, you know. I mean, I didn't say anything at the time, because he's my Lord and Master's son, but he was not cute at all. And he wouldn't stop crying either. Gave me a headache."

"Mm." Aziraphale's face deepened for a moment, as if he was brushing over a memory. He had definitely expected his own Lord's son to be a little more impressive. It had taken him a lot of will to not be - or rather not show - his disappointment at the wrinkly, pink, not-at-all-glowing child covered in hay. "How did the swap go?" he continued, stifling a burp.

"Without a hitch," said Crowley. "Handed over the baby, left them to it. Simple as that. I mean, the entire point of the order of Satanic nuns in the middle of England was for this very day, so they wouldn't dare screw it up. Not least because I doubt my boss would be very impressed.”

The demon sat back. "I do wonder how they recruited the nuns, sometimes. I mean, do you just approach a viable candidate and say, you know, 'Hey, there, are you interested in living in the middle of nowhere in an old churchy type place that also doubles as a birthing hospital despite having zero qualified medical staff, solely for the purpose of swapping this kid, who will be the son of Satan, and has a bunch of titles I can't for the life of me remember? The amenities aren't great, but you'll be changing the world. Or ending it, rather.' I mean, I wouldn't take them up on it, and I'm a demon. But hey, they had quite a few nuns there, and they all seemed happy enough, so either they chose to be there or Hastur probably bewitched them."

Crowley waved his hand around as he spoke, and the glass in the other wobbled with the movement, wine escaping over its brim. Aziraphale listened to him, marvelling at his regained ability to take in words; he thought, and eventually said, "You don't seem very happy about it."

"About the end of the world? No, I can't say I'm over the moon about it. Are you?"

"Well, I mean, Heaven finally triumphing over Hell, that's... good, I suppose. I mean, that's the whole point, really, isn't it? I... I think I'll probably just cheer the angels on, and then head back here. I mean, all the humans will be dead, but I never sell any books anyway."

"Aziraphale... the world is going to be _destroyed_. You don't get to pop back to your bookshop after the world has been destroyed. There will be no bookshop. There will be no London, no England, no _planet_. Don't you get that?"

"Oh."

Crowley watched Aziraphale's face turn, like a child realising the puppy they were playing with had just died. Awkwardly, he reached out to place what he hoped was a comforting hand on the closest part of Aziraphale, which happened to be his foot. For once the angel had taken off his shoes and his soft beige socks lay against the stained floor. Aziraphale slowly looked down at the hand, and stared. Crowley quickly took it away. At least Aziraphale didn't seem to be dwelling on the thought of all his books being destroyed anymore. He didn't seem to be thinking about that at all. Crowley numbly counted this as a win.

"Oh!" Crowley came to life again. Aziraphale jumped. "I remember what I was saying about the Antichrist. I was thinking, killing him will annoy  _ both _ of our head offices, so we probably shouldn’t do that, and I'm not really big on killing babies anyway, even ugly ones. But, if we make sure he doesn't grow up evil... then he won't  _ want _ to end the world and we can all just go back to bed. I really wanted to sleep through this decade. Then I wouldn't have to deal with YouTube and the one with the little bird where an overabundance of idiots gather and make the rest of the world seem sane simply because they're so pants-on-head crazy, and then I could wake up and look at that whole disaster and say, 'Yep, that was me. That was very evil, and that was me.' Like the Spanish Inquisition. They start all this inquisitioning, and I was in the area, and I could just take the credit for it. Evil humans are always going to beat evil demons to the punch, let's be honest. They have a deadline. They've got, what, eighty years? We have _all of time_."

Aziraphale nodded. "I suppose you're right," he said, not entirely following but glad of the topic change. "So, what, you're saying we... Make him good? How? He's the child of _Satan_ , you know. He's evil incarnate."

"Is he, though?" said Crowley. "I mean, Satan himself was an angel once upon a time. He's only evil because he  _ became _ evil, you know, the same way you  _ become _ a plumber. Well, not quite the same, obviously, but it doesn't mean that the Antichrist will necessarily turn out the same way as his father. Plumbers do not necessarily produce plumber children, especially if they're not even around. Maybe he'll be good incarnate. My point is, you can't assume. And together, you and I can balance out the good and evil in his upbringing to make sure he's... as balanced as you'd expect from the person who's supposed to bring about the end of the world."

"What have plumbers got to do with it?" said Aziraphale. 

"Nothing, that's the point! The same way  _ Satan _ now has nothing to do with this child. He's not going to pop up to babysit, is he? Everything that will influence the child will come from this planet, which, rather conveniently, we are both on."

Aziraphale looked at Crowley - who was leaning forward with a slightly deranged smile - and then round at his books. "This planet," he muttered, fidgeting with his cuff. "Yes... But wouldn't it be, you know, _wrong_?" He glanced back at the demon nervously. Crowley's encouraging nodding turned into a bemused shaking.

"Wrong? We'd be doing the world a favour! We'd be  _ saving _ the lives of the seven billion humans and countless other creatures that live here - or at the very least, giving them another eleven years. What's so wrong with that?"

Aziraphale hesitated. He glanced up briefly. Absently, he reached for a glass and then drew back. "Well it's..." He sighed. "It's against the Great Plan, but I suppose..." Crowley smiled again. Aziraphale winced. "I suppose it couldn't do any harm to, you know..."

Crowley sat back with an air of satisfaction. " _Thwart_ ," he said smugly.

"Yes," said Aziraphale, frowning. "That."

"See? No need to look so doubtful, Aziraphale. I will do evildoing, and you will thwart the evildoing. That's your job, is it not? That can't be against the Great Plan. And then your head office will be happy, and my head office will be happy, and we can keep drinking  _ lovely _ wine in your little bookshop in Soho for a while longer."

Aziraphale pinched the bridge of his nose, where his glasses would sit if he wore them. "I don't know, Crowley. A favour here and there, that's all very well, but this is... interference with the Divine Plan."

"Divine," snorted the demon. "Always so holier-than-thou. If the Divine Plan involves sitting back and letting Hell do its evil work, then what kind of a plan is that? You really believe God would stand for it?"

Aziraphale made a pained expression. "The Divine Plan is all-encompassing," he said. "Even your forces are bent at the will of the Almighty, you know," he added with an air of smugness.

Crowley raised his hands in what might have been a shrug, if a shrug were put through a mangle. "Then why don't you just win?" he said. "Why fight a war when you already control the other side?"

"To prove that good will triumph," said Aziraphale. "To prove that Heaven is greater than Hell."

"And this takes six thousand years why, exactly?"

"It's the Ineffable Plan, Crowley. It is not to be questioned by the likes of us."

"Then by the likes of who?"

Aziraphale stared at Crowley flatly. "Do you actually care, or are you just trying to be contrary?"

"I'm just trying to understand," said Crowley. "I mean, if what you say is true and everyone's will bends at the hands of the Almighty, then surely any action you take will fulfil Their plan, because really, that's the only action you ever  _ could _ have taken, because God controls it all."

Aziraphale blinked. "Am I drunk again already, or does that just make no sense?"

Crowley groaned. "Come  _ on _ angel. Look beyond your heavenly filters for once. I'm making sense, whether you like it or not."

Aziraphale opened his mouth to interject, and Crowley hissed him quiet and plunged on quickly.

"If God has control over everything, then everything we do  _ must _ be in accordance with God's ineffable plan. If God's not setting our every move in stone and is playing this whole cosmic game just to have the self-satisfaction of knowing They created goodness right, then we're doing Them a favour by testing it. If the ineffable Divine Plan is so great and perfect and simple to follow, then  _ why doesn't anybody know what it is? _ Trust me, I asked around before the - before, and nobody knew. _Nobody knows_ , Aziraphale. So how can you know that trying to make one boy a little bit nicer is against it?"

Shoulders slumped in defeat, Aziraphale waved his arms in a kind of shrug. "Fine. Fine. Let's do it, but I'm telling you now, if anybody ends up smiting me, it's your fault, and you're going to have to live with that."

"Deal," said Crowley, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Now can we please get back to something a little less existential? Dolphins seemed interesting, and I'm not entirely sure you ever got to your point."

**Author's Note:**

> As previously in this series, half the credit is due to my friend Lobster, who provided half the content and the original idea.


End file.
